Abuse of Command

The sorry spectacle [in the 1990s] of U.S. Army drill sergeants preying
upon female recruits raises important questions about
military culture. It also invites a reread of some parts of
scripture for Jews and Christians. Here I consider the
well-known narrative of David in 2 Samuel 11.

THE NARRATIVE LINE OF THE story is well-known, attracting
continual attention because it is a powerful rendition of
illicit sex. David the king spots Bathsheba and asks her
over. He is the king; it is a command performance. After only
a single rendezvous (so far as we know), she sends the
characteristically devastating two-word message:
"I'm pregnant." That entire narrative report
takes only four verses.

Pregnancy is not what the king intended. And so the
cover-up begins. David is prompt. He mandates a furlough for
one of his commanders, Uriah by name, who is the husband of
Bathsheba (verse 6). David intends, by a furlough for the
commander, to encourage visible contact between husband and
wife, so that the pregnancy can be understood, or at least
publicly presented, as authored by Uriah. Unfortunately for
David, Uriaha non-Israelite!is a man of high
military principle who will not enjoy his wife while his
mates are at risk in combat. The relatively benign strategy
of the king fails.

But David is undeterred. He goes deeper into the morass of
royal manipulation. He sends a written order to Joab, his
second in command, ordering the death of Uriah by a
calculated, mistaken military strategy (verses 14-15). This
time the plan works. Uriah is dead; nobody knows who caused
the pregnancy. David's sexual "error" is
adequately covered.

The story ends with a cunning report from Joab to the king
that the mission is accomplished. Uriah is dead; the cover-up
is complete. David emerges as a ruthless, unprincipled,
exploitative leader who will stop at nothing to protect
himself. A sexual venture gone amuck requires a cover-up,
even a violent one.

I HAD PAID NO ATTENTION, until the ... triggering by
the report of the drill sergeants, to the fact that David's
narrative of sexuality is framed militarily. The entire
Uriah-Bathsheba narrative, including the reprimand of Nathan
the prophet, the death of the illicit child, and the birth of
the legitimate son Solomon, stretches from 2 Samuel 11:2
through 12:25. The narrative has a series of distinct
episodes, but it is a coherent narrative moving from
David's initiating lust to Solomon's birth.

But as always, the biblical narrative hints at more than
we easily recognize. The narrative of sexuality is
framed by a larger military narrative, a framing that
brings it close to the patterned narrative of the drill
sergeants. The opening frame is a brief one in 11:1: "In
the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle,
David sent Joab with his officers and all Israel with him;
they ravaged the Ammonites, and besieged Rabbah. But David
remained at Jerusalem."

It is often noticed that "David remained in
Jerusalem." For our purposes, it is to be noticed as
well that it was the combat season and Joab was hard at it on
behalf of David against the Ammonites. The verse is an
isolated comment. It is, however, picked up in 12:26 as a
continuation: "Now Joab fought against Rabbah of the
Ammonites, and took the royal city."

The narrator has forgotten nothing. There is still combat,
still Joab, still the Ammonites, still the active verbs of
conquest. The closing frame provides a massive victory for
David, who arrives at the battle site just in time to be
decisive as a military man of the hour. All the heavy lifting
was done by steady, unflappable Joab, who misses nothing.

The framing of a narrative of sexuality by a narrative of
the military is complete: military (11:1); sexual
(11:2-12:25); military (12:26-31). The victory is immense for
David. And within the presentation of David's military
victory is the presentation of David's sexual
indulgence, cover-up and all. The public in Jerusalem sees
only the military drama. We privileged readers know about the
story within the story. The narrator offers it all to us,
without any comment.

BUT NOT ONLY IS the sexual narrative itself framed by the
military. If we take the framing of 11:1 and 12:26-31
seriously, we begin to notice that the internal narrative is
also saturated with military nuance. There are in fact only
three principle actors in the narrativeDavid, Joab,
Uriahexcluding Bathsheba, who is not in fact an actor but only
acted upon, only permitted two words, albeit decisive words.
She is the object in the narrative, not a subject.

The three male characters are fully military. David
is the commander. And he acts like a commander:

He sends for Bathsheba (11:4).

He sends word to Joab to give Uriah leave (11:6).

He sends the fatal order for Uriah's death
(11:14-15).

He offers a dismissive verdict at the end of the
narrative, the verdict of a hard military man
(11:25).

Uriah is no less a military man whose work is
trusting obedience. He is obedient to his king, a man under
orders. He comes home from the front on command (verse 7). He
returns to combat on command (verse 14). He resists the will
of his king only to honor the higher loyalty to his men in
the field (verse 11).

And Joab, no less than Uriah, is a military man,
with the same readiness to obey as exhibited by Uriah; Joab
dispatches Uriah home on command (verse 6). And then he
dispatches Uriah on orders (verses 16-17). He dispatches a
messenger with a carefully created press release, enough for
public consumption, with a hidden reassurance for the king
(verses 18-21).

The entire narrative is a transaction among military men
who understand each other and who know how to conduct
themselves. The sexual act in the end requires a killing. But
it is not a big moral trauma. Killing is what happens. So the
king, who needed the death, provides a terse military summary
of the necessary act: "Do not let this matter trouble
you, for the sword devours now one and now another; press
your attack on the city, and overthrow it" (verse 25).

The framing of 11:1 and 12:26-31 calls attention to the
military saturation of the internal narrative of sexuality.
The narrative of sexuality and cover-up is not something
different. It is of a piece with the framing. The premise of
violence legitimates the violence of sexuality, the violence
of cover-up, the violence of required killing.

I suspect that the drill sergeants, even convicted, [were] no
odd or exceptional characters. They [were] an articulation of
military culture that breathes the legitimacy of power, lust,
violence, and exploitation. The drill sergeants, like David,
like Joab, like Uriah, live[d] in an atmosphere of legitimated,
required violence. That atmosphere of legitimated violence
does not limit the violence to the enemy, but includes
whomever one may find compelling.

The immediate context of military culture, moreover, is
sustained by a larger context of greed and exploitation,
brutality and economic promiscuity that is without
neighborliness, a culture into which we are all more or less
inducted. David, Uriah, and Joab are not actors in a vacuum,
but participants in a military culture that the narrator lets
us see and enter.

The violence in both arenas, ancient and contemporary,
soon or late works against all those who are vulnerable. Even
would-be strong ones, in special circumstance, turn out to be
vulnerable and victimized, as Uriah discovered belatedly.
When one reflects on the larger David story that begins in
the Goliath episode (1 Samuel 17) and ends in the Solomonic
blood bath (1 Kings 2), the entire story has an ominous
undercurrent of violence that makes none immune.

THE VIOLENCE GIVEN sexual expression in a military culture
is given free play in the narrative. The account of sexual
violence stands on its own and proceeds in an unchecked
narrative. We may, however, notice two critical responses to
the indulgence of the king. At the end of chapter 11,
David's cynical response to Joab on the required death
of Uriah is: "Do not let this matter be evil in your
eyes" (verse 25). This is followed in a verdict that
Gerhard von Rad long ago saw as subtle but decisive:
"But the thing that David had done was evil in the eyes
of Yahweh" (verse 27b).

The eyes (meaning the capacity for judgment) of military
culture are profoundly indulgent. It is clear, however, that
the indulgent verdict sent by David to Joab is at best
penultimate. The "eyes of Joab" and of David are
trumped, according to the insistence of the narrative, by
that other eye (also meaning the capacity for judgment), the
eye of Yahweh, the one who sees evil for evil, without
euphemism.

The second, more direct critical response is on the lips
of Nathan in his bold address to David:

Why have you despised the word of the Lord, to do what
is "evil in his sight"? You have struck down Uriah
the Hittite with the sword, and have taken his wife to be
your wife, and have killed him with the sword of the
Ammonites. Now therefore the sword shall never depart from
your house, for you have despised me, and have taken the wife
of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife (2 Samuel 12:9-10).

"The sword" has done in Uriah. It was an
Ammonite sword, willed by a Davidic strategy, motivated by
David, but in the end wielded by no one. It is a sword done
remotely, passively, without direct agent. There were no real
actors, only Ammonites who are scarcely culpable in the
event.

But that sword, and the corruption that authorized it, are
forever. The vicious cycle of violence, here triggered in the
arena of sexuality, will remain uninterrupted in Jerusalem
until David's family is destroyed, brother against
brother, finally Solomon against Adonijah (1 Kings
2:23-25)...until David's people are laid low by the
sword that does not depart: "Surely this came upon Judah
at the command of the Lord to remove them out of his sight,
for the sins of Manasseh, for all that he had committed, and
also for the innocent blood that he had shed; for he filled
Jerusalem with innocent blood, and the Lord was not willing
to pardon" (2 Kings 24:3-4). It may not be accidental,
moreover, that one of the agents of this ultimate destruction
are "bands of Ammonites" (2 Kings 24:2).

The drill sergeant may [have been] simply the point man for the
common violence pervasive among us, a strange mixture of
innocence and cunning. It did not seem ominous that afternoon
on the roof. It never does. It is ominous only in the context
of the larger narrative that places everyone in endless
jeopardy.

When this article appeared, Walter Brueggemann was professor of Old Testament at Columbia Theological
Seminary in Decatur, Georgia, and a Sojourners contributing
editor.

Like what you're reading? Get Sojourners E-Mail updates!

Sojourners Comment Community Covenant

I will express myself with civility, courtesy, and respect for every member of the Sojourners online community, especially toward those with whom I disagree, even if I feel disrespected by them. (Romans 12:17-21)

I will express my disagreements with other community members' ideas without insulting, mocking, or slandering them personally. (Matthew 5:22)

I will not exaggerate others' beliefs nor make unfounded prejudicial assumptions based on labels, categories, or stereotypes. I will always extend the benefit of the doubt. (Ephesians 4:29)

I will hold others accountable by clicking "report" on comments that violate these principles, based not on what ideas are expressed but on how they're expressed. (2 Thessalonians 3:13-15)

I understand that comments reported as abusive are reviewed by Sojourners staff and are subject to removal. Repeat offenders will be blocked from making further comments. (Proverbs 18:7)